Building a brighter tomorrow with LEGO® bricks
LEGO Space Models
Last Saturday, we changed out the display at the LEGO store in Santa Clara.
The Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group installed a new display at the Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara, CA featuring a large spaceman model and various nanoscale spaceships by Charles and Adrienne, and a rocket-powered knight by Bruce. This replaces my Blackburn Hotel that had been on display since May 31.
Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.
There’s a very interesting Interview on BoingBoing with Bjarne P. Tveskov, Classic LEGO Space Designer.
I grew up on some of these sets! I started collecting Space LEGO sets in the late 1970’s when I was a little kid, and spent most of my spare time building and rebuilding classic LEGO spaceships and bases.
This was built for the Ice Planet 2002 Contest on Lugnet. I didn’t win, but I thought it captured the essence of the LEGO Ice Planet 2002 theme.
Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos. |
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This hybrid rocket/jet aircraft takes off and lands like a plane, and the engines switch to rocket mode to reach orbit, where it docks with a space station or the Lunar Tour Vehicle for their next destination. This uses the Docking System I devised for spacecraft. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos. |
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Part bus, part spacecraft, this vessell meets up with the Passenger Transport in Earth orbit and ferries them to the moon, where they can spend a week visiting the Apollo landing zones and other historical and natural wonders. Its rockets pivot aft for flight, and downward for takeoff and landing. Inside are all the luxuries a traveler could want, plus facilities for the crew. A generous galley and head are included. This uses the Docking System I devised for spacecraft. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos. |
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On my old site, these were four separate entries, but in reposting them I have combined them into one.
In August 2001, Paul Hartzog announced he was sponsoring a “HoverThing” contest. The Contest announcement and rules were posted on LUGNET and many people submitted entries, including myself. I didn’t win, but here are the models I built for the contest. The official contest website shows all the entries, including the winning one. Pocket RocketShown in both blue and black versions. Hover PatrolA simple police cruiser Astro-PumpkinA very silly entry for the contest. The main point was to employ an unusual color scheme and to find a use for the angled part in the nose. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos. |
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Another repost.
A fighter spacecraft. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos. |
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Here’s another old post from my old site.
This scout craft visits asteroids and takes samples for analysis, so that if it should prove suitable, mining craft can come and extract minerals from them. Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos. |
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These were some of the first LEGO models I made as an adult, which I first posted on my old site in 2001.
These little guys are miniature robots or mecha, made as an experiment in getting new uses from some rather specialized parts.
My newest Space creation is the Lunar Mobile Lounge which has actually been at several BayLUG meetings, even though I never posted about it here.
The concept is based on the “mobile lounges” at Dulles (Washington, D.C.) International Airport, which ferry passengers from one terminal to another. However in this case, they ferry people to their waiting spacecraft which landed nearby. Since most spacecraft that people build out of LEGO don’t have wheels, it would be hard for them to dock to the moonbase – it would require some very high-precision flying to land right at a moonbase connector! Therefore I felt there was a need to be able to carry people to and from spacecraft.
Since the spacecraft might have doors that vary in height, I used a scissor lift mechanism to allow this vehicle to raise and lower the passenger compartment – something the Dulles lounges also can do – to match whatever height is needed. You might remember I asked back in March about ways to do this – I ended up using a worm gear to drive, through a short geartrain, a spool that would wind up a string that was attached to the moving leg of the scissor lift.
The vehicle is equipped with an airlock which includes the moonbase connector. The airlock has two doors to the outside – the moonbase connector and a door with stairs leading to the ground (when the vehicle is lowered all the way, that is). There is one interior door, a sliding door which connects the passenger area with the airlock. On the roof you can see the plumbing for the airlock mechanism – hoses and compressors and a big tank for air which are used to alternately drain and fill the air in the airlock and passenger areas. On the underside of the roof are the vents for taking air in and out of these areas.
Click the photo above to see more, or click to look on Flickr (slideshow) or on Brickshelf (pending moderation).[tags]lego,space,moonbase[/tags]